Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

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LelandCrooks
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Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#1 Post by LelandCrooks »

Having cut several hundred piezos at least, it still makes me nervous. Letting my son do it made me even more nervous. Here's a very simple mod that gets you out of the way, minimizes the chance of a cut gone wrong throwing out of the jig. I cut the 45's on the sliding miter box, but this would work on the 45 tablesaw jig also.

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It pinches them tight. Just pulls up against the body of the tweeter. For the reversed cut you have make for the outside piezos on an array you need a notch for the screw to fit in on the first cut side.
If it's too loud, you're even older than me! Like me.
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LelandCrooks
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#2 Post by LelandCrooks »

I should add, this does not allow you to trim the screws as in the plans. Only the body of the piezo itself. I trim the screws and their housings on a grinder. Takes another step, much safer.
If it's too loud, you're even older than me! Like me.
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SoundInMotionDJ
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#3 Post by SoundInMotionDJ »

With the recent DR redesigns to accommodate the melded arrays, is an "alternate" placement of the piezos in the array possible? If you could glue the array up with piezos alternating direction, you could skip the trimming of the screws all together. That would be even safer.

--Stan Graves
10 T39S + 10 DR200 + 1 T48

WB
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#4 Post by WB »

I see I'm not the only one with a freezing cold shop. :evil:
Tomorrow I'm going to stop procrastinating - WB

gdougherty
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#5 Post by gdougherty »

SoundInMotionDJ wrote:With the recent DR redesigns to accommodate the melded arrays, is an "alternate" placement of the piezos in the array possible? If you could glue the array up with piezos alternating direction, you could skip the trimming of the screws all together. That would be even safer.

--Stan Graves
This is exactly what I did after reading the DR280 plans and seeing the arrangement to pack a bunch vertically. All my melded arrays are made of tweeter horns trimmed down to a 32nd or so under 1", which is pretty much just the element housing width. The nice part is that doing this way, my table saw blade stays just low enough to cut through the mounting rim of the horn and I have little fear of running them all by hand. The first cut is no problem, the opposite side though requires a low spacer against the fence so the cut edge runs straight. Otherwise the screw mount sticks out and makes a straight cut near impossible. I cut down enough horns to make 8 14-element arrays in a little over an hour once I had my spacer and measurements worked out.

djtecthreat
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#6 Post by djtecthreat »

I always liked the jig DaveK made shown here,

http://billfitzmaurice.net/phpBB3/viewt ... &sk=t&sd=a
DJ TecThreat
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-Built-
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DaveK
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#7 Post by DaveK »

Thanks. I hesitate to talk about that jig in a thread about saw safety, but I'm very happy with it. The reason I hesitate is that I hold the tweeters in the jig with my fingers as I slide it across the blade. That puts my fingers within 2 inches of the blade. Needless to say, I'm very careful.

Image

gdougherty
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#8 Post by gdougherty »

DaveK wrote:Thanks. I hesitate to talk about that jig in a thread about saw safety, but I'm very happy with it. The reason I hesitate is that I hold the tweeters in the jig with my fingers as I slide it across the blade. That puts my fingers within 2 inches of the blade. Needless to say, I'm very careful.

Image
Alternate your tweeter orientation, leave the horn housing intact, and raise the blade just high enough to cut through the mounting rim. It's significantly safer.

djtecthreat
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#9 Post by djtecthreat »

DaveK wrote:Thanks. I hesitate to talk about that jig in a thread about saw safety, but I'm very happy with it. The reason I hesitate is that I hold the tweeters in the jig with my fingers as I slide it across the blade. That puts my fingers within 2 inches of the blade. Needless to say, I'm very careful.

Image

I think your jig is at least 100% safer than trying to feed them through the saw without a jig. I think I like doing them on the table saw with a jig like that better than trying to do it with my chop saw.
DJ TecThreat
-Building-
8 More T48's

-Built-
11 T48 @ 24" 3015LF ( Using 8 )
8 OTop12 - Thread after they were built. & Review, using them w/o subs.
4 SLA Pro's
"Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music." - R.R.

pwfirst
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#10 Post by pwfirst »

I like the jig alot, I'll use it for my next build. I bought a blade for cutting plastic for $7 and it did a grate job with out melting the plastic. Phil
DR 250's #2
T39's 14 in with 102 #2

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Harley
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#11 Post by Harley »

Ok, here's my Piezo Melded Jig.

I've taken ideas from the other jigs and because of fast production required and safety needed, this works a treat

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Here's the general view shown sitting on the saw bench to make the first and second cuts. Just flip the jig around to do the 45 degree cuts. Where my jig differs is that it has a push block each end for the left hand and also a pinion arch for placing my piece of aluminium angle under ( this angle has foam underneath to grip onto the piezo tops ) and clamp own on the piezos.

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Putting the clamp bar ( in my case aluminium channel with foam underneath ) into the pinion arch. The pinion arch is closed at the end to stop the clamp bar pushing right through

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With the right hand, clamp down on the piezos.....

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..and with the left hand push on the push block

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Flip the jig around - same procedure for the 45 degree cuts
ImageSemi-retired: Former Australia and New Zealand Authorised BFM cab builder.

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David Carter
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#12 Post by David Carter »

Harley wrote:Ok, here's my Piezo Melded Jig.
Excellent! Thanks for sharing!
Dave

Built:
- Omni 10 (S2010 + piezo array)
- 2 x DR250 (DL II 2510 + melded array)
- 2 x Titan 39 (BP102 - 14"W)
- 2 x Titan 39 (3012LF - 20"W)
- 4 x DR200 (Delta Pro 8B + melded array)

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LelandCrooks
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#13 Post by LelandCrooks »

Would you move to the frickin states so I can come over and steal stuff out of your shop? :clap:
If it's too loud, you're even older than me! Like me.
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Tim A
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#14 Post by Tim A »

Nice. I like the part where your hand stays away from the $*&%^ blade!

bgavin
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Re: Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

#15 Post by bgavin »

LelandCrooks wrote:Would you move to the frickin states so I can come over and steal stuff out of your shop? :clap:
+1

Or help you make bail.
:loler:
My biggest worry is that when I'm dead and gone, my wife will sell my toys for what I said I paid for them.

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